A social network service is an online service, platform or site that focuses on building social networks or social relations among people (e.g., those who share interests and/or activities). A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as by e-mail and instant messaging. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.
Currently, there has been a trend in attempting to assess the interactions between people, topics and ideas that occur in a social network environment. As a result, various “social metrics” have been utilized, such as volume (number of posts), reach (size of audience), and engagement/conversation/applause rates (number of likes, shares, etc.). These metrics provide valuable insights especially when a large amount of data is available to aggregate results.
However, these metrics are deficient in attempting to assess the impact of ideas from individual posters, such as within an organization or community. That is, these metrics are deficient in attempting to assess the impact of content created by a user that is utilized in a social network. For example, an individual user, especially within a private organization, may have a large number of followers or a high engagement just because of the user's current role in the organization. Hence, the current social metrics of engagement or number of followers would not necessarily indicate the impact of the poster's created content that is utilized in a social network. In another example, a user may receive a lot of likes and comments by posting about the accomplishments or accolades of the user's colleagues without contributing new ideas. Hence, the current social metrics of likes and comments would not necessarily indicate an impact of content created from such a user.
However, a user with few followers may contribute ideas which have broad impact in an organization. In a social network, especially an enterprise social network, it is common for content of a document (e.g., e-mail message, a post, a word processing document, a presentation) to be reappropriated and reused, often without the original author's knowledge or consent and in a different form than the original content. This may happen when sections of a document are reused in another document. For example, the content in an author's document may be reused in another user's status update or blog or in a wiki authored by another user. In another example, the text from a technical wiki page may become part of a presentation used by a marketing team.
Unfortunately, the authorship is attributed to the person who submits the content to the social network, and the actual original author of the content may not receive any credit for the creation of such content. Content may not only be directly shared in the social network as-is, but may be taken out of the social network, altered, added to, or quoted without attribution, making it difficult to credit the original author.
Organizations have attempted to motivate their employees to contribute new and valuable ideas and insights through their social networks. However, there are not currently sufficient metrics for evaluating the impact of content created by a user that is utilized in a social network thereby not providing any means for recognizing the impact of the user's content. As a result, there is less motivation for users to post created content in a social network because of a lack of recognition
Furthermore, users miss important content buried in a long list of updates from their network and groups, communities or pages they follow. Communicators and content consumers in a social network miss important content being created in their networks. Valuable insights are lost.
Additionally, individuals in social networks may serve as catalysts for information sharing, being themselves unimportant for content and knowledge creation, but critical to information aggregation, curation and distribution. While individuals will rarely leave a personal social network, enterprise networks are characterized by constant change with employees and business partners constantly changing. When nodes of the network are removed from the network, knowledge sharing and information distribution are disrupted. Content creators may no longer be as connected with individuals who have historically consumed their work in the form of a derivative content.